Thousands of fishing boats - therefore it shouldn't be too had to find.
 

There are thousands of fishing boats in this part of the world so somebody should easily spot any wreckage.
In some locations you can imagine walking from boat to boat...

Well its all we have right now in the public domain so we can use it but be mindful of the possible problems

As for anyone on the platform seeing something I'd have thought it unlikely - especially at night anyone working will be inside or heads down at their work. Better bet might be any safety or supply vessel in the area

But unless there was a fire it would just be a dark piece (s) of metal so not likely. Should be easier in daylight

Should be able to find the FR failry quickly - this should be a lot faster than the AF crash to resolve

Any idea of how much fuel they'd carry for such a flight?
I suppose no fuel in the centre tank?

As I seem to have stirred the proverbial by daring to refer to FR24 as a source of data, I'd like to make a point or two. (i) I get the strong impression that because it is not 'official' , many 'flying' people pooh-pooh it. (ii) While FR24 may indeed not be 100% reliable, a simple check in the sky (i.e look at plane, check with FR24, see if what it says correlates with Mk I eyeball) indicates that it is pretty reliable. (iii) When there is a terrible disaster and a total absence of 'official' information, is it not sensible to at least pay heed to whatever information is available and to rapidly check it out? As as example of 'official' versus 'unofficial', yesterday I checked into LHR to wait for a delayed EY to arrive and take me to AUH (fog plus no runway lights had previously shut AUH). On duty Etihad staff at LHR had no idea where the two incomings were: I was able to accurately tell them of their ETA simply by having a dekko at FR24. "Well, you know more than I do, sir!" said the EY chap. FR24's prediction was spot on. QED

ToC may be a suitable time to switch on the centre tank fuel pumps to recover the fuel which could have migrated there during the climb?

Incapacitation would have left the aircraft flying along at the last flight level and if LNAV engaged, then on the planned track. Any major event, such as decompression, that occurred to the aircraft would have been picked up by MAS Ops via ACARS.

Pilot error? After 2hrs plus and at FL350 the aircraft would have certainly been on autopilot. What error could they have made that resulted in the aircraft being lost?

Aircraft do not just suddenly fall out of the sky without some huge catastrophic event occurring. No radio calls at all were allegedly received (maritime operations monitor 121.5 too) and I am sure that slowly the events will be pieced together and a conclusion will be made.

It's extremely sad to read this morning's news and my thoughts are with everyone directly involved and affected by this incident.

Li-ion perhaps. Burns fast

Fairly experienced crew, according to Malaysian officials the captain had 18365 hours.

All you will see from the 777 at TOC is a thrust reduction and depending on SOPs turning off the exterior lights.. Whatever happended happend sudden. Eg bomb or possible pilot suicide. Pilot error in cruise is virtually non existant. Who knows, one of the pilots might of gone to the loo after reaching TOC.. Pure speculation. A very sad day

I'm puzzled. It's now approx 18:30 local KL time and sun sets in 1 hour. Local weather seems favourable for searching, the search area seems to be fairly well defined and there appears to be good radar coverage in the area to have it pinpointed. Still, no credible reports of traces after almost one full day's search - no oil slick, debris etc. reported so far.

OK, the sea crossing is some 200-250 NM so it is a sizeable piece of water and the middle parts may be beyond helicopter range. But it's not in the middle of the ocean either.

Hope we get clarity soon.

Please stop rubbish speculation. 777 uses automatic scavenge pumps in the centre tanks. Fuel does not "mitigate " to the centre tank during climb. Please stop making stuff up.

Missing MAS 777-200 had uneventful history - 3/8/2014 - Flight Global

Journalists eh? FlightGlobal at that.

He must have forgotten about the wing incursion incident.

What should the pilot have done to achieve this? Do you assume they were manually flying aerobatics at that point in time, when they were suddenly incapaciated during the maneuver???

You can safely assume they were on Autopilot before this (whatever it was) occured.

What happened then will hopefully be answered by the FDR/CVR.
At the moment nothing can be really ruled out.
Structural failure (e.g. incorrect repair of wingtip?)
Failure to mind the store while AP disengaged/did strange things.
Explosive device.
CWT explosion.
Suicide.
FCS problem.
x other scenarios.
Although some might be more likely than others.
We will know for sure when they found and analysed the recorders.
Until then I'm afraid the only thing which might become clearer somewhat sooner is if it disintegrated at altitude, once the wreckage has been found.

Stolen Passport used on Flight!
 

3 Italian Sources to confirm that passenger Luigi Maraldi was not on flight as stated by the passenger manifesto.

Is there foul play suspected here??? An aircraft disappearing out of the sky .... smells of foul play.

Luigi called his parents from Thailand to tell them he was safe on the ground and was never on the flight.

Sources:

Aereo scomparso in Malaysia, mistero su Luigi Maraldi: non era a bordo ma chi è salito con il suo passaporto?

Aereo Malaysia Airlines caduto in Vietnam, Luigi Maraldi chiama casa: 'non ero sull'aereo' | The Horsemoon Post

Aereo Malaysian scompare in mare. 239 a bordo. Paura per italiano ma è vivo | Blitz quotidiano

He reported his passport stolen in Thailand on August 1 2013

The flight manifesto:

http://images.says.com/uploads/story...62264/1d61.jpg

He was clearly on the passenger list. Now the question becomes... who was using his passport?

And is this foul play connected to the aircraft disappearance?

I know my airline has a huge screen (can see it from the entire room) with FR24 in their ops center to simply track the entire fleet. They also have weather overlay addons with it (radar, colour coding airports etc)

I would definitely rate it a bit higher then an enthusiasts tool.

Another photo of the wing damage sustained by 9M-MRO -

?????????????????? - ???? - ???

Any nautical people have any idea of water depth in the approximated area of the last position?

Will crash recovery be hampered by depth?

Bathymetry Data Viewer | ngdc.noaa.gov

Roughly 100m depth.

ALL references to the Perth in-flight upset incident involve ANOTHER airframe.

9M-MRG

check the earlier posts - not very deep at all apparently

Sorry, that's rubbish.

http://pic.feeyo.com/pic/20120810/20...0956203830.jpg

Most civil aircraft reach top of climb approximately 30 minutes after take off, give or take. (Depending on ATC restrictions A/C weight etc)
This aircraft had, apparently, been airborne for a couple of hours, so well into the cruise.
From my experience out of WMKL you are usually pretty close to TOC as you coast out from the east coast of the Malaysian peninsula, depending on the hand over from KL to Singapore ATC.
These guys are quite good and you normally get your requested/filed level shortly after crossing the coast.
This, undoubtedly, sounds like a massive and rapid catastrophic disaster which completely overcame the crew before they could even announce anything on the radio.
Bomb, airframe failure, oxygen, cockpit incursion, meteor strike, something highly, highly unusual for this modern aircraft to simply fall out of the sky and disappear?

Isn't Malaysia extremely tight on security, along with Beijing bound aircraft checked NSA style by the Chinese Government? I'm no expert in Security but Aviation Terror incidents are not easy, but not impossible for those flights. More importantly why would a terrorist target that city pair.

It is intriguing that the aircraft has been involved with a structural incident In the past; but I'm pretty sure that part of the 777 wing is just aerodynamic and not mainly structural integrity. I suspect wing box and spars were replaced in any repair job. G-BNLL had similar damaged and flew happily - before doing it again.

The fact Boeing tweeted waiting for news reports suggests even they don't know what's entirely happened; suggestive of something happening very quickly with no trace.

ASN and BEA say it was 9M-MRO that sustained wingtip damage at Shanghai-Pudong

ASN Aircraft accident 09-AUG-2012 Airbus A340-642 B-6050

http://www.bea.aero/fr/enquetes/2012...semaine.32.pdf

Depth is divable
 

If plane is in 100m, this is divable for significant numbers of professional divers and FDR should be recoverable with appropriate equipment.

Recommended technical diving limit 100m. Maximum depth authorised for divers who have completed Trimix Diver certification with IANTD[7] or Advanced Trimix Diver certification with TDI.

So sorry to wake to this news today

RATPIN -there are several weather related posts earlier - to sum up it was very benign

I occasionally run an adsb receiver in South Vietnam, I never hooked it up to publicly transmit anything to the global internets, but I can confirm that "enthusiast" coverage over large parts of SE asia is spotty and random. Most of these gadgets are not online 24/7, not redundant in any way, and a lot of airspace isnt covered. Central Europe is different, but believe me, That the track disappeared but others were tracked says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

(And for those here who might be interested in looking at the ongoing search operation by tracking ships: publicly accessible martitime transponder - AIS - coverage is much worse. Last time I checked, there was a french electrical engineer working for a shipyard who set up a very capable yagi out of Saigon, but that's about it).

A good friend of mine worked at the maritime rescue coordination centre in Vung Tau, and now works for the central SAR coordination in VN. He's a hard-working, highly dedicated professional, a ships officer by training (just like me, originally, before I found myself in aviation), he once spent a half a year working at Solent MRCC as part of an exchange and professional development program. His father was a professional mariner, before him, I attended his funeral. He sometimes complains about being underfunded, compared to the armed forces in VN, but I'm very impressed with the capabilities of vnese Search and Rescue. They have some state of the art equipment, patrol aircraft, very modern vessels, and most importantly, highly dedicated and motivated professionals. They have a tough job, with no opportunities for financial gain.

I wont disturb him with any questions now, but my thoughts are with him, and all the others involved in this massive search operation. Let them do their job.

If you've flown in that area of the world you'll realize how congested the waters are. As earlier comments have pointed out, there must literally be thousands of vessels at sea, and hundreds in the area of the last known a/c location. It just boggles the mind that aside from the a/c disappearing without a trace, there have been zero reports that one might expect in such an event from eye/ear witnesses on the ground or at sea.

Puzzling. Sympathies to all the crew and passengers and their loved ones anxiously waiting for any shred of news.

I have not got he full information. How many flightcrew members in this flight? I know the missing time is the very early moring during flight. Only two men crew for such a long and mostly nigh flight? I mean that will be very tired for oly two man crew. Or two of three, like AF447, and one of them was on his/her rest during cruise phase? What I heard is 53 years old captain with a 27 years old young FO. Too deep rank?

194 posts already and no real substance - please calm down guys.

All we know is that the aircraft vanished from radar and no radio communication was received.

We have a very approximate location involving thousands of square miles of sea and it could take a long time for the first debris to be seen. If the aircraft met the water in one piece this will narrow down the search area, If the aircraft broke up in flight the main wreckage including the flight recorders could be a hundred miles from a piece of lightweight debris.

Sadly the reality is that the flight recorders are unlikely to be recovered for a long time, weeks or even months.

Until then all speculation is pointless.

Whilst I agree and you weren't on the site during the AF447 initial moments, this thread will grow exponentially until such time as wreckage is confirmed and then grow even more.

Mysterious circumstances will always draw great interest.

Have I got something wrong here? FlightAware last reported position 4.7073 102.5278 Course 025 is over land in Malaysia 107nm bearing 027 from KL.

It is technically very simple to have 5 second updates on every aircraft anywhere in the world. It is possible to have continual real time feed of important data, shortly it will be possible to have real time FDR/CVR upload 'to the cloud'.

The best we can expect though from operators is an ACARS messaging system that reports maintenance issues - not necessarily in order of occurrence, ADS-B transmissions to ground stations - when in range, ADS-C satcom around every 10 - 20 minutes or on vector changes (dependent on contract). The reason that
Is due to accountants not wanting to spend the extra even on more ADS-C transmissions (you know they are a $2 a pop?) and some not wanting real time capability for the company to be able to watch FOQA or listen in to flight crew. All these discussions were 'hamster wheeled' for AF447.

AF447 also showed how long it takes to get from FL350 to sea level. The fact that the crew did not 'communicate' means that whatever happened was extremely fast and prevented communication. This indicates an event more like PanAm 103 than AF447.

If there were that many fishing boats out and as it was a clear night anything approaching TWA800 in magnitude would have been seen by hundreds of people. I suspect we will start getting eyewitness reports soon.

Italian network Retequattro reported an hour ago that the italian citizen in the passenger list had called home from Thailand telling his father he is alive and well and has never been on that flight.
Journalist speculated about a false/stolen passport.

I dont know, but MAS is reporting this position,
Even though they got the lat/long muddled up.

Sepang, 8 March 2014: Malaysia Airlines is still unable to establish any contact or determine the whereabouts of flight MH370. Earlier today, Subang ATC had lost contact with the aircraft at 2.40am. The last known position of MH370 before it disappeared off the radar was 065515 North (longitude) and 1033443 East (latitude).

I fly over that area regularly, and there are always hundreds of fishing boats in the area. Sometimes it looks like stars on the ocean, there are so many.

I definitely agree, but the ADS-B coverage between Malaysia and Vietnam just before and after Flight 370 are faultless. Flight 370 was in trail behind MAS52, which had complete ADS-B coverage all the way to Vietnam, and another flight followed with no problems in coverage either. Is it possible they are sourcing their data from ARINC or one of the ATC centers there?

Similarities with AI 182 ..... That was too close to home and heart. :oh:

How do you know they didn't get on the plane?

Just read this:

Flight Track Log ? MAS370 ? 08-Mar-2014 ? WMKK / KUL - ZBAA / PEK ? FlightAware

Look at the course change and altitude change in seconds, strange.